CRTs: The Way Games Were Meant To Look
Who needs 4K, anyway?
Sharper is better, right?
It’s a well-known fact in the retro gaming community that CRT (cathode ray tube) TVs are a part of the authentic experience. No matter how accurate an emulator is, it just isn’t the same as playing a game on a CRT, or at least that’s what you hear everyone saying. You may have never even seen a CRT in person, and feel content with the flatscreen you have, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Having a personal preference doesn’t make you enjoy the games less, but it may still be worth it for you to try out a CRT display at least once. Why? Let’s take a closer look at the major differences:
Blur
CRTs, in a general sense, are blurry. Some can display a very sharp image, but most consumer-grade sets somewhat blur the pixels on the display together, producing a softer image. To anyone who grew up with flatscreen displays (as I did), this may sound like a step down in quality. After all, wouldn’t you want the sharpest image possible for the best results? If you didn’t, display manufacturers wouldn’t bother packing even more pixels into flatscreens, right?
On some level this can be correct. To those who prefer sharp, crisp displays for modern games, a perfect display would mean a better image. However, games made before the seventh console generation (PS3 and Xbox 360) are a different story.
Games like Gradius III completely transform when played on a CRT display. This example was taken on a late 90s/potentially early 2000s-era Durabrand CRT (the model number seems to have torn off at some point, sorry) and the differences are obvious and drastic. A camera cannot capture the changes accurately, but the colors change, the image stretches into 4:3 (from the SNES’ 8:9 output) and the edges are softened. The game was designed around the blurry, stretched image of CRT displays to smooth out rough edges on sprites and add detail that otherwise is hardly noticeable (look at the dark outlines in between the rocks!) to produce sprite work that looks much less interesting in an emulator. The pixel-perfect screenshot shows flat-looking rocks and sharp edges on the circular bullets launched by the Moyai heads.
Brightness
Modern flatscreen displays have a great range of colors and a high pixel density, but CRTs’ phosphor scan inherently displays colors differently than a modern display. Dark areas become pitch-black and lighter areas, if manipulated correctly, smoothed into highlights. This can be seen in Konami’s Life Force where the highlights on organic surfaces become much more pronounced on a CRT than on a flatscreen display.
Stretch
Many games weren’t intended to be displayed at a perfect 4:3 ratio. Something you may not immediately notice about CRT displays is how they stretch the image horizontally, elongating the pixels and displaying wider as a result. Many games were designed around this effect, turning what would be a disadvantage into an effect unnoticeable to the end user. Unfortunately I do not own any specific games that show this effect particularly well, but I did throw together a quick three-way comparison of Super R-Type anyway.
Conclusion
While this is not an exhaustive list of the benefits of CRT displays (I skipped scanlines, input types, signal artefacting, etc for conciseness), it should hopefully give some impression of the importance of using one for historical accuracy. In the end, though, it comes down to what the player prefers. Whether that preference has been shaped by years of emulators or an absence of older technology does not matter as long as an informed decision is being made on how to play. Reproducing the effect of CRTs on flatscreen displays requires some effort. Many releases, such as the Nintendo Switch Online versions of classic games, opt to display the raw pixels instead. As such, this is how many a young gamer will first experience these games. While this is largely fine, it’s important to remember that pixel-perfect was never how these games were intended to be displayed, and the lack of decent CRT options in modern re-releases of classic games is disappointing.
It is also worth mentioning that different CRTs will display the images differently, with various color depth and sharpness. Some even have settings to change these, so experiment and find out what works for you. I would also like to give a special thank you to CRT Pixels on Twitter for inspiring my admittedly overzealous commitment to authenticity in retro gaming. Please go check the comparisons out, and maybe pick up a CRT TV if this has piqued your interest.
